


mnemosyne

by skai_heda



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Not Compliant with Avatar Comics, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skai_heda/pseuds/skai_heda
Summary: And then she dreams of Zuko, of getting to him too late. Murmured words too quiet to decipher, amber eyes going glassy, star-shaped wound hot to the touch.She doesn't wake with shaking breaths or with fingers clutching at the sheets; she doesn't wake with a pained yelp, or even with tears on her eyes. No, all she has in the wake of her nightmares is the dull, hazy silence of morning. Katara opens her eyes without movement after nightmares, staring up at the ceiling with her heart pounding so hard that it hurts, but it never shows on her face. Even alone, she can't seem to shed the mask of normalcy, of passive contentment.Katara is glad that her dreams are infrequent, to put things simply. She has enough to worry about without them.
Relationships: Katara & Kya (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 309
Collections: Essentials





	mnemosyne

**Author's Note:**

> anyways imagine comic zuko for this i guess lmao (like in the promise and stuff)
> 
> anyways uh im sorry

Katara's mother brushes her hair every night, long and slender fingers always a comforting weight against the back of her neck. Kya always puts her hands on Katara's shoulders once she's done, and though they aren't always in front of the mirror, she knows her mother smiles.

This is all Katara remembers about her mother. She is glad she doesn't remember anything more than that.

* * *

Katara wonders sometimes whether Sokka remembers more about Kya than she does. He is older, after all.

The thought never lasts long. Sokka is not that much older than her, and even in childhood he had always been closer to their father than their mother.

Still, when she was younger, grief fresh in the wake of her mother's death, she would hate Sokka sometimes for getting more time, if only just over a year.

She always reminds herself that she is lucky to have not had more time. More time would've meant more things to remember, and more things to remember would mean more things to miss.

_To remember is to grieve._

She'd rather not waste her entire life grieving for something she's never really had.

* * *

There's a deep, inescapable emptiness in her, that she has spent her entire life trying to fill. Trying to walk the line between sibling and parent for Sokka, trying to keep Aang safe and cared for. Accepting all the responsibility, knowing that she had to be the safety net rather than let herself fall, trusting that there was something to catch her. It tore at her insides, sometimes, her hollow bitterness, but as long as she was the only one who even knew, everything would be fine.

Even now, after the war has ended and conflict has subsided for now, she feels as though the ground is constantly shifting beneath her feet, like her blood is freezing even while a fire rages in the pit of her stomach, like she takes every step against raging wind. An Avatar in her own right, she thinks sometimes with a bitter smile.

Katara thought it would get better as she got older. She assumed that one day, piece by piece, she'd fill that emptiness with her love for her friends and happy memories, and everything in between. One day, she would be older, and she will have successfully killed her grief, suppressed it under a million smiles and a million good deeds.

It was never supposed to be the way it actually is now, where Katara starts to get ill frequently, nights spending throwing up as if her body could somehow repel that crushing sorrow, all of her guilt and all of her anger. Waking up with shaking limbs and damp pillowcases, only to spend the day smiling as if it had never happened.

She doesn't dream much, but when she does, she can barely get out of bed. Watching Sokka die. Watching Toph die. Finding her mother's body in their home, lifeless and pale, her skin still warm when Katara had reached for the necklace. She dreams that she had not had the spirit water, and that Aang had died in her arms, grey eyes pleading until the very end.

And then she dreams of Zuko, of getting to him too late. Murmured words too quiet to decipher, amber eyes going glassy, star-shaped wound hot to the touch.

She doesn't wake with shaking breaths or with fingers clutching at the sheets; she doesn't wake with a pained yelp, or even with tears on her eyes. No, all she has in the wake of her nightmares is the dull, hazy silence of morning. Katara opens her eyes without movement after nightmares, staring up at the ceiling with her heart pounding so hard that it _hurts,_ but it never shows on her face. Even alone, she can't seem to shed the mask of normalcy, of passive contentment.

Katara is glad that her dreams are infrequent, to put things simply. She has enough to worry about without them.

* * *

After the war, Katara creates hospitals. Not physically, obviously, but she travels much, seeking to heal as many people as possible. By the time she's twenty, repairing the damage of the entire world has become her sole purpose. She still speaks to her friends, and though she and Aang are no longer together, their agendas and lifestyles and ideas too conflicting, he is still as central to her life as the others are. 

Uncle Iroh likes to say that Katara is always chasing something—another fight, another city to help, another person to save. She smiles, but she cannot help but feel as though she has been running away her entire life, now more so than ever. Katara feels like there's some invisible force behind her, waiting to swallow her whole, wrap its hands around her mouth and pull her even farther down than she already is.

Katara starts to dream again. It is easy to keep her state from her friends, but she no longer finds it easy to lie to herself, and Katara has always been a very good liar.

* * *

One of the worst things about being a healer is the fact that it would be impossible to heal everyone. There are always losses, and for the most part, Katara is good at keeping their faces out of her dreams, and she is good at forgetting their final words. 

In a hospital east of Ba Sing Se, there is a man who has been terribly sick for a very long time, and now, Katara sits with him. She has done everything she could, and it is not enough. 

The man is young. Not as young as Katara, necessarily—old enough to have lived, but too young to die. He does not go easily, not with a final exhale or with eyelids slipping closed. The man dies in agony, wasting his final breath on a scream that sounds as though something has reached into him and forcefully pulled it out. He screams and he cries in his final moments, fingers clutching the blankets until they go abruptly limp.

Watching death is always nearly unbearable, but Katara hopes that if she does have to see someone die, they die quietly, wordlessly.

That night as she sobs quietly into her hand, she wonders whether her mother died like that.

* * *

Bitter emptiness has carried Katara all over the world, and it has finally pushed her to the Fire Nation. 

Her arrival is unannounced, and though Zuko seems happy to see her, he can never be with her for long—always some meeting to go to, some war to prevent, some problem to fix.

She and Zuko have the same sort of hollow anger inside themselves, she realizes, the same desire to fill the ever-growing gaps within themselves with something else, something to cover up their pain. Although, Katara supposes that she has no excuse for feeling this way—she's got the freedom of doing whatever she wants whenever she wants, and Zuko is stuck here trying to fix a hundred years' worth of pain and mistakes.

Katara never likes staying in one place for more than a month. She stays at the Fire Nation for three, trying to help Zuko as much as he can. It takes a couple weeks of persuasion, of _I'm just trying to be there for you_ and _I swear I'm fine_ and _please just let me help you_ before Zuko finally cracks, gives in to her storm. And so they are stuck together for hours, poring over files and maps. It is easy to melt into his presence, into the purpose of the moment—everything has always seemed easier around him.

One night, he rises from his desk, smiling slightly at her when his face goes pale and he stumbles, right into Katara, his hands finding the small of her back. His fingers are so long that they nearly reach the curve of her waist, and he smiles apologetically at her, removing his hand. "Sorry," he mumbles. "I'm just really tired."

She smiles back at him, trying not to think of the momentary column of flame that had burst to life within her at his touch. Katara catches him putting his fingertips to his chest, just for a moment.

The moment passes. Katara leaves the Fire Nation a week later.

* * *

Katara visits the Fire Nation frequently, but it is only two years later that she actually stays longer than a week. Zuko is twenty-four now, but to Katara, sometimes he still looks his moderately sulky teen self. He keeps his hair relatively short for the Fire Nation style—Katara suspects he's simply too afraid of looking like his father. Another scar too deep to forget, on the heart rather than the face.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asks her one night during dinner.

"Like what?"

He shrugs, picking at his food. "I don't know. Like you're worried about me or something." His tone is nearly accusatory.

"Is that a bad thing?" Katara replies. "I'm always worried about you guys."

His hand creeps to his chest again. She wonders whether that's a new nervous tick he's developed, and why he seems to do it all the time. "I just think you shouldn't spend so much time worrying about me."

Katara leans back in her chair, crossing her arms. "I have all the time in the world, Zuko. I can afford to worry about you a bit, can't I?"

He leans forward, his honeyed eyes suddenly look like flames. "I just don't want you turning me into your next pet project."

Her hands curl into fists under the table. "What?"

"You don't think I've noticed every time you come here?" Zuko asks, looking almost—worried. She hates it. "I know you're running from something, Katara. I just wish you trusted me enough to tell me."

"It's called having a purpose in life," she snaps, feeling unreasonably angry, but at the same time she feels detached from it, as if she's watching someone else on the verge of implosion. "I'm not running away from anything, Zuko. I'm just doing what I'm supposed to."

"What's that? Lying?"

A jet of water rockets towards his eye before he can even process it, and Katara watches as he leaps up and away. Katara expects him to angry when he looks at her again, but he just looks surprised and a little sad. She figures Zuko wouldn't exactly be new to enraged outbursts.

She is nearly at the door when he says her name, so quietly that she almost doesn't here it. 

"What?" Katara hisses, fingertips on the doorknob.

"Stay," he tells her. "Just stay with me here. In the Fire Nation." A moment later, she feels fingertips brushing her shoulder. "I could use your help with things. And I think maybe you should just stay in one place for a while."

His fingers withdraw from her shoulder, leaving her feeling suddenly cold. "It's up to you. But I think you should stay. And if you don't want to, then leave."

Zuko pushes past her and opens the door without even glancing at her, and she knows in that moment that she's going to stay.

* * *

For the first time in a long time, Katara has a nightmare. She dreams that she dies next to Zuko, that she has to lie immobile and in pain, listening to his breaths fade out, his soft repetitions of her name like some long-forgotten prayer.

Her face is damp when she wakes up, her heart beating as fast as it normally does after a nightmare. She feels as though she is slowly disintegrating, more and more pieces of her dissolving into nothingness. That horrible, aching emptiness in her heart makes her clutch at the sheets with trembling fingers, her breath coming short and fast. She stumbles out of bed and into the bathroom, throwing up nearly nothing.

Zuko finds her some time later, sitting against the bathroom wall, staring at nothing. He pulls her into his arms immediately, burying his face in her neck, the Fire Lord headpiece scraping the curve of her neck.

"It was just a nightmare," she tries to tell him, even as she presses his body against hers, craving his perpetual warmth. She wants to melt into him, to merge with his existence so fully that she will never again know where she ends and he begins. It is hard to breathe with him holding her so tightly—it would be harder if he let go. "It was a bad dream," she murmurs. "I'll be okay. I just need to rest."

"You've lost your mind," he tells her, cheek pressed against hers. Katara's exhausted—she's already collapsing against him, hands going limp against his back. Even the air around her seems like a crushing weight, squeezing her lungs and heart. Gently, she's pulled up and into Zuko's arms, feet hanging above the floor. He murmurs something against her hair, and Katara falls asleep.

* * *

When she wakes, Zuko is sitting by her bedside, flexing his fingers, the sunlight streaming from her window creating a golden outline around him.

For a minute, she think she can feel her mother's hand in her hair, fingers twining in the dark strands.

_To remember is to grieve._

Katara sits up, slowly, but a soft sound escapes her mouth. Zuko turns, putting his hands on her shoulders to steady her. "If you wanna act like that never happened, I'm going to stop you right now."

She tries to focus on his face, but she can barely make out the sharp lines of it. "It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare. You're telling me you never have nightmares like those?"

Zuko shakes his head. "I didn't say that, Katara."

"Well, don't look me in the eye and say you've never had a nightmare that made you sick to your stomach." She tugs herself out of his grip, lying back down. "Go away. I'll be okay. It just happens—every once in a while."

This is not strictly true, which is why she has to concentrate on something other than him when she says it. It has always been too hard to lie to him.

"No," he says. "Get up."

"I'll kill you," she murmurs. "I'll drown you on land."

"I'm sure you will. But you're going to help me first. Get up, Katara."

She sits up, ignoring the way her head spins. "What do you want from me?"

"I just need help with my Fire Lord stuff."

"Help? You've managed fine on your own for eight years."

Zuko smiles at her, and for a minute, it almost makes her strong enough to get out of bed. "Yes, but it's always easier if I have a second set of eyes, right?"

Slowly, carefully, she swings her legs over the edge of the bed. "I'm fine, Zuko. We all have our bad memories, and we all have to relive them every once in a while. Right?"

"Right," he answers, but his voice is muffled by uncertainty. He keeps a hand on his chest as he rises from the bed. "I'll see you later today, then?"

She smiles at him, and hope it's as convincing as she wants it to be. His fingers twitch as if he might touch her, but he seems to decide against it, turning and walking to the door.

Katara can still feel those phantom fingers in her hair, a soft voice that she doesn't remember well enough to describe.

She takes off her mother's necklace and sets it on the nightstand before getting ready for the day. She doesn't think she'll put it on any time soon.

* * *

"Put your hips into it, Katara. It's a part of you."

She holds the curved _dao_ out from her body, trying to follow the way Zuko holds his own. It is late in the night, and it has been about a month since her nightmare. "When did you find time to learn how to use it?" she asks, trying to envision the blade as a smooth jet of water.

Zuko just smiles at her, expertly demonstrating a twisting movement, swinging the blade and bringing it down. "Try it again. You've almost got it."

Katara swings the sword, smiling as she nearly perfectly replicates the way Zuko did it.

"That's perfect," he tells her. "Only took you a thousand tries."

She twirls the hilt in between her fingers. "Maybe you shouldn't say that to someone holding a sharp sword."

"I just don't understand how you learned it so fast," he marvels, putting his sword into the hilt at his hip. "I've only been teaching you for about a month."

"That's plenty of time for me," she tells him. "I'm a fast learner."

Zuko's smile wavers. "Hey, are you—are you still having nightmares?"

"No."

He doesn't seem to hear this. "You know you could always—stay with me. If you don't want to fall asleep."

"And do what instead? Read files?"

"Alright, alright," he raises his hands in surrender. "I'm here if you need me."

 _I don't need you,_ she wants to say, but she keeps it to herself. Allowing herself to hide in the relative comfort of life here is easier than being honest.

The truth is, Katara doesn't want to return to bed alone. She doesn't want to dream of cold skin and unseeing eyes and wake up with no confirmation that none of it was real—no confirmation for at least a few minutes at least. She wants so desperately to fall, to be free of the iron grip on her heart.

It was supposed to get better, when she was with him. Zuko was like the sun rising over the peaks of mountains for the first time in a thousand years, but Katara was blind to the light.

She wonders if the world will ever right itself, whether it will ever stop wobbling back and forth, threatening to throw her into oblivion. Katara wishes she could reach into herself, put one hand on either side of the chasm inside and squeeze it shut the way someone would close a book, words and stories and memories locked in between two hard covers.

She cries herself to sleep that night, as she so often does these days. 

_I don't want to be like this forever,_ she thinks desperately, wheezing into her pillow, mouth open in a silent sob. _I just want it all to be over. I want to wake up tomorrow and I want to be happy._

Her body rocks, like a ship taking it's final stand over stormy waters before descending into the freezing depths of the sea.

* * *

They are training together a few months later, blades clanging against each other noisily, illuminated by moonlight.

"You know," he says softly, hair dripping with sweat. "I think I created a monster."

"Don't be jealous, Zuko," Katara smirks, swinging her sword at him. "I know you're proud of me."

"Of course I am."

There's something wrong with him tonight. His movements are too slow, and he nearly misses every opportunity to block her attacks.

In between one second and another, his face goes deathly pale and he freezes, making Katara nearly chop his arm off. She drops and sword and grabs him before he tumbles to the floor.

"Zuko?" she asks, cupping his cheek. "Oh, my god. Zuko. Look at me."

He blinks. Once, then twice. "I'm fine," he says slowly, swallowing with some difficulty. She watches his throat bob. "I'm just tired. I haven't eaten much today."

"You— _what_ is wrong with you?" she mutters. "Do you just not care about yourself at all?"

Even as he lies limply in her arms, his expression hardens. "You're one to talk."

"Don't make this about me."

He closes his eyes, exhaling shakily. "Help me up."

Slowly, carefully, she pulls him up. Zuko stands there for a long time, hands wrapped around her shoulders, forehead resting against the side of her head. Two souls falling endlessly through the air, with nothing to hold onto but each other.

Katara helps him walk to his room after she gets him to eat and drink something, allows him to go into the bathroom to splash some water onto his face. She goes inside after he's been in there for five minutes, soft coughing sounds coming from where he stands.

"Choked on my own spit," he says with a rueful chuckle. "Does that ever happen to you?"

"All the time," she answers absentmindedly. There's a faint red stain at the corner of the sink, like apples, like her sheets, like Zuko's clothes. She's too exhausted to really even process it, and when Zuko falls into bed, she falls right along with him.

* * *

They don't wake up tangled up so tightly that they seem fused together, but their fingers are loosely bound together when Katara blinks away the cobwebs of sleep from her eyes, greeted by the sight of pale skin. She glances down to see a star-shaped scar on his chest, looking unusually red in the dim morning light. She reaches out to touch it, gently—also her fault. She as good as blasted the lightning from her own fingertips that day.

Katara thinks of what would've happened if she had been too late, and her other hand tightens convulsively on the blanket draped over them. Perhaps if she were a braver woman, she'd move closer, drown herself in Zuko's warmth. She thinks that if Zuko could reach out and into her, he would find something golden rather than cold emptiness, like a gem being pulled from the earth. 

She takes a deep breath, trying to freeze the moment in her memory.

_I am not brave. I have never been. I only know how to run._

She tightens her fingers around his and closes her eyes.

* * *

From then on, they never sink into their beds alone. Some days they will collapse into her bed, sometimes into his. Never too close, but always touching. A binary star system, except the stars are about to collide and burn everything to fiery oblivion.

They can't pretend this is something that friends do for each other, but they are silent. She has her nightmares, but it is always easier when she wakes up and she sees him, honey and sunlight and fingers curled loosely around her own.

* * *

She dreams of a memory. She dreams that she is young again, and she is prying her mother's necklace off of her neck. Uses the sleeve of her clothes to wipe the dark red liquid off of it. Saying her name, until Katara knows her mother won't answer.

The memory shifts. Kya reaches out and closes her fingers around Katara's wrist before she can rise to go get her father, and her skin burns where her mother touches it. The necklace falls from her hands, and the dream ends.

Katara releases a choked sob as soon as she wakes up, and there are arms immediately pulling her close, towards a warm mass, into the blanket of the sun.

"Why is it like this?" she asks him some time later, when she has stopped shaking. "It's been—it's been so long since I found her like that, and I _still_ can't let go of it, and I'm so tired of feeling this way. And it's not just her, it's never just her. It's you and Sokka and Aang and Toph and Suki and Dad and Yue and then it's me, too."

"Katara..."

"There's something wrong with me," she says with conviction, reaching up to put a hand over her heart. "In here. And I have lied my entire life about it, about the fact that there's barely anything in here. Or that there's too much, and I can't feel it anymore. I can't hide behind trying to fix the whole world anymore because it's too big for that. And I just—I just want to _scream and scream_ until my entire body just breaks into a million pieces, and even then I can't rest. I can't ever rest, and I'm sick of it, Zuko, I'm _sick._ I feel like I'm dying slowly, in here. Broken and half-dead and useless."

"You aren't broken," he says into her hair. "You were never broken, Katara."

"Then why am I like this?" She intends to yell, but her voice comes out weak and shaky. "Aang woke up one day and found that he had lost _everything_ he had ever loved. You lived in this place with no mother and just your dad and sister to keep you company. There are thousands of people including all of you that have suffered a hundred times more than I have, so why I am I the one who can never handle it?"

"Because you kept it all down inside," he says softly. "You lied and you lied. You even lied to me. Let me finish," he says, when she opens her mouth. "I'm not angry, Katara. I know exactly how you feel, because I used to feel like I'd rather get boiled alive than admit that I was hurting. Look, you're not broken because of the way you are right now. You only feel this way because you never got to process it all, how much the world has hurt you. And believe me, even if it was just about your mother, it would still be justified. Losing your mom is never easy, especially if you loved her more than anything. You aren't broken, Katara. I promise."

She is silent for a long time. "I can't remember what color her eyes were."

Zuko's hand, which has been drawing circles on her hip, stills. She knows he can recognize himself, in those horrible words. "I have my dad's eyes," Katara continues. "And so does Sokka. And I know they were different from Mom's." Katara clenches and unclenches her hand. "I don't remember what her voice used to sound like. What shape her face was. How tall she was. What her favorite things were, aside from me and my brother and my dad. She is—she was my mom, and I don't even know her." She blinks. "To remember is to grieve."

"Where'd you hear that?"

Katara sighs softly. "I don't know." She tilts her head up, her chin bumping against Zuko's. Honey and sunlight. Blood on a blue gem. "I tried so hard to forget her, thinking it would mean that I wouldn't spend my life missing her. But then I remember than I succeeded, and I fall apart all over again." Hands reaching for gold at the bottom of a bottomless pit, hands poking out from under a tarp.

They are in her bedroom. Zuko momentarily pulls away, and she nearly gasps at the loss of contact. But he comes back, he always does.

In between their bodies, he holds up her mother's necklace. "Can I..."

She doesn't answer, which is an answer in itself. She's done saying no.

Zuko reaches around her neck and puts the necklace on her again. The gem is cold against her skin—it is familiar.

He pulls her into her arms, and he is asleep before she can say anything more.

Katara is far from alright, but she's here. She'll have a bad dream, but it might not hurt so much when she wakes up. Glassy eyes—grey, blue, green fogged up by blindness and regular green like trees swaying in the wind. Amber. Blood on a blue gem. Honey and sunlight.

* * *

"I'm thinking of taking a vacation," Zuko tells her one night.

Katara snorts. "There's no way you can just—do that."

"I'm the Fire Lord."

"Exactly. I don't think taking a vacation out of nowhere is a very Fire Lord thing to do."

"Well..." he trails off, rubbing the back of his neck. His topknot is loose today, today being a rare day that he doesn't have to attend any council meetings. "It's not entirely for me."

Katara laughs. "You want me to go on a vacation with you?"

"Well, not exactly a vacation. Think—life changing field trip part two."

She leans forward. "Just get to the point, Zuko."

He swallows. "I want to go the South Pole and help you find out more about your mother. And look," he adds, putting his palms over her hands and pressing them down into the table between them, "before you try to stab me with an icicle, just consider it. Maybe it is better if you—if you remember her better. Or, at least, know more. If you're going keep trying to act like she never existed then you'll get more and more bitter about how you never really knew her. And hey, I know your mom is only part of the problem, but it's a good place to start."

"I don't want to," she sighs, twisting her hands so that she's now holding his, causing him to look down in surprise. "I appreciate the thought, Zuko. But maybe I'm better off the way I am."

"No, you're not. There's really no point in lying about it. I see you, Katara," Zuko murmurs softly, and when their eyes meet, she wonders if he really can look into her, right down to the hollow space right at the center of her being. He reaches out to touch her cheek, briefly. "I just don't want you to live with that pain forever."

"If I go with you will you stop bothering me about it?"

He retracts his hand, eyes shadowed. "Sure, Katara. I'll do whatever you want."

"Okay, but I still don't understand how this is going to work—"

"The world won't fall apart if I'm gone for a few weeks," he tells her. "At least, I hope it doesn't. I mean—Uncle Iroh will kind of be helping with stuff while I'm with you."

Katara is silent for some time.

"You're going to hate the cold," she says finally.

"I don't care."

* * *

"You were right," Zuko says about a week later, shivering in the snow. "It's not my favorite. But I don't really want to firebend here—"

"What's he doing here?" someone asks sharply, and Katara's eyes widen when she realizes that her grandmother is right in front of her. 

"Easy," another familiar voice says, and then Sokka appears, lunging at Zuko and tackling him into the snow. "I've got this handled."

"Get—off," Zuko's muffled voice says, coming from under Sokka's body.

Katara smiles wanly before turning back to Gran Gran. "It's alright," Katara assures her. "He—"

"I know," Gran Gran sighs. "I still have my doubts when one of his people show up here. You understand why."

"Of course I do."

"I read the letter you sent to your father and brother," her grandmother continues. "What do you want to know about Kya?"

Katara swallows. She turns back to see Sokka and Zuko still wrestling in the snow. 

"Everything," she says.

* * *

They've been at the South Pole for a week the night Zuko finds her outside in the snow, right by the water.

"Not exactly a beach," Katara hears him say as he sits down next to her. "But I'll take it?"

"What are you doing here?" she asks him incredulously. "Go back to bed where you'll be warm."

"Do you want to be alone right now?" Zuko counters.

She pauses. "No."

He takes one of her gloved hands in between two of his. "So... how do you feel?"

Katara sighs. "I don't know."

All the stories that Gran Gran had told her about her mother were each more interesting than the last, but Katara wasn't really sure how she felt about all of it. She knows about the smaller, finer details of her mother's life—at this point, she knows nearly everything she wanted to.

And yet it's not enough, and she feels like a horrible person for feeling it.

"What?" Zuko asks, letting go of her hand. She almost asks him to take it again.

"I don't want to sound ungrateful—"

"It didn't work."

"No." She looks at him, a lump in her throat. She tries to focus on other things—how she can feel the coldness of the snow through her clothes, how good Zuko looks in blue. "I wanted it to be enough, I did. But hearing all this about her just reminds me how far I am from her. How everyday, I get even farther. It was a good idea, Zuko. But—" Katara fights back tears. "It's never going to get better, is it?"

"It's never going to go away," Zuko replies, slumping a little against her, just as she does the same. Together, they hold each other up. "But it gets better. One day."

"It's been sixteen years," Katara tells him. "Almost seventeen. I was _six_ years old when she died, and I'm a full grown adult now, and I—it's never gotten better."

"You never allowed it to get better," Zuko tells her. "I'm not an expert on loss or grief, Katara, but I can see pretty clearly what's going on with you."

She's silent, thinking, considering. Katara takes a deep breath, wondering if she can ever really be the same again. 

What's going to happen when she's finally consumed from the inside out, when her own sorrow grows too big for her body?

"Tell me what you remember," Zuko murmurs. "Every detail."

Katara pauses.

"She used to brush my hair," she says finally. "Every night."

After a long silence, Zuko looks at her. "Is that all?"

Katara doesn't answer. She just cries and she falls, and Zuko catches her, always.

* * *

They go to Ember Island after they leave the South Pole, something about how he wants to enjoy some time alone before he returns to his duties.

Katara suspects it's more for her benefit, but she says nothing. She feels detached from everything, falling, spinning, floating. Feet on the ground only when Zuko holds her there, fingers warm and gentle.

It is a full moon tonight. Katara never sleeps well during a full moon.

She goes outside after carefully untangling her fingers from Zuko's, sighing softly once the sweet breeze of the sea hits her nose. And she goes to stand with her feet touching the water, waves lapping at her ankles.

"Why aren't you in bed?" she hears Zuko say after about thirty minutes.

"I can't sleep."

He stands next to her, arms crossed. "Why?"

"Stop asking me, Zuko."

She tries to not flinch at the hurt that flashes in his eyes. "I just want you to talk to me, Katara."

Katara turns to face him. "Well, maybe I don't want to talk about it as much as you want me to. I don't understand why you keep _trying,_ Zuko!"

He looks at her then, half of his face illuminated by moonlight. "I'm doing _everything_ I can for you!"

"Well, stop! I don't understand why you even care so much, why you're so determined to make all the pain go away—"

"Because I _love you!"_ he yells, his breathing coming in short bursts. 

"Don't," Katara murmurs quietly. "Don't say that."

"Stop telling me what I can and can't do!" he exclaims. "I'm not saying this for you anymore, not at all, okay! I am _in love with you,_ and I think that I was going to _explode_ if I had to keep that a secret any longer. You have to know that. You have to know."

"No, I don't!" she snaps, backing away from him. "Just take it back, Zuko."

"I'm _not_ taking it back!" Zuko yells. "I would give you the entire damn world if you wanted it, Katara, because _that's_ how much I love you. And I'm not saying this to try and make you feel better about everything that's happened, I'm saying this for me. Because it's the truth, it's always been."

"Shut up," Katara tells him. "Shut up, Zuko, or I swear I'll—"

"You'll what?" he asks. His hands are trembling, fingers grasping at his own clothes to hide it. "Do you have any idea how much it hurts me to see you like this?"

"There's _nothing_ I can give you!" she tells him. 

"I don't want anything from you," Zuko replies. His voice is softer now. "You can go back to bed and pretend this never happened, if you want. I don't want anything at all. I just wanted you to know how I feel. And I don't _care_ if you go on without loving me or without even wanting to. I don't care about that at all. But you have to know why I do this for you, and you have to know why I'll keep doing it as long as I love you. And I know I'll love you for a long time." He stumbles back, putting a hand to his forehead. "I tried so hard not to, Katara, I really did. But I love you. And that's all there is to it."

Katara feels like a statue now. She feels like she's frozen in a block of ice, cold and still.

Zuko looks at her one last time, eyes shining. "I'm going back to bed," he murmurs. It seems like such a startlingly normal thing to say after what he's just told her. "If you don't want to stay out here all night then you should go back, too."

She doesn't.

* * *

They eat breakfast together, the following morning. If Zuko notices the dark lines under her eyes, he doesn't say anything about it.

"When are we going back?" Katara asks at some point. Her voice is scratchy.

"Soon," he sighs. 

They continue their day in silence.

* * *

Katara wants to pretend like last night never happened—like she stood alone by the sea all night, like she still has no idea how he feels about her. Katara wants to pretend that she is the same—frozen and empty, but it's not true. The chasm of aching hollowness within her doesn't feel the way it usually does, because there is something else now. There's amber and honey and sunlight, and she wants to fall into it, because he'll be waiting. Zuko will catch her, always. There's anticipation and there's dread and then everything in between, like a small flame rising into a column of fire. And god, she _wants and wants and wants,_ and Katara wants _him._

* * *

She stays out by the sea long after the sun sets, and of course, Zuko comes to her again.

"I'm sorry about last night," he says after they sit together in silence for some time, waves coming up to their knees. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"Yes, you should have," Katara murmurs. "You should've told me earlier, actually."

He looks at her, eyes wide. "What?"

"You know I'm a liar," she tells him. "You know all I do is lie. And you know I'm good at it, too."

His hand is on her cheek now. "But you can't lie to me."

"No," she murmurs, putting her own hand on top of his. "No, I can't. I could never, even if I spent my entire learning how to lie to you. I couldn't do it." Katara puts her other hand against Zuko's own face, thumb brushing the boundary between smooth and ruined skin. "I love you. But you already knew."

A tear clings to his eyelashes as he tilts his head down, exhaling. "Deep down, yeah. I think I did."

"Say it."

He leans close, nose brushing hers. "I love you."

Her back is on the sand now, him hovering over her. "You're not empty, Katara," he tells her, putting his forehead against hers. "Because every single part of me from the inside out is in here," he tells her, lifting a hand to touch her heart. "Everything. Every good thing and every bad thing. It's all yours."

Katara kisses him then, hands grasping at his dark hair. It's deep and it's desperate and yet it's unhurried, because they both know they have time. The pressure of his lips pushes her apart and he makes a soft noise in his throat as she pushes his clothes off of his shoulders and throws it a few feet away, body arching into his in a way that makes both of them gasp.

Zuko pulls his attention away from her mouth, kissing along the curve of her jaw and her neck. "I love you," he tells her again, and again, and again. "And I just—" He laughs softly, taking her hand in between one of his and slowly pushing it up until it is lying atop the cloud of her hair, his own fingers curling around her own and the dark strands. "I just want to have you, right here."

She smiles up at him ruefully. "Think of all the sand. And neither of us are sandbenders."

Zuko exhales softly as he traces the lines of her body, every curve and turn, as if he could draw her into his memory and keep her there forever. "You're a waterbender, aren't you?"

Her smile widens.

They are broken into pieces on that beach, the shards of each being mingling together until they can't tell where one person ends and the other begins.

So when they finally come around to the process of building each other up again, they are made more of each other than themselves. Katara is falling and she loves it. She is falling, and Zuko catches her, always.

* * *

It takes her a minute to remember where she is the next morning. At some point they had gone from the beach to the house, and now she's in bed with arms wrapped loosely around her. Fingers trace unknowable shapes into her hip, amber eyes meeting hers.

She surges forward and kisses him. Her heart is beating fast, but it's good.

* * *

They're back at Ember Island in the same bed a year later, arms and legs tangled together, warm and bare skin pressed together. But now there are two golden headpieces on the nightstand—one for Zuko, one for Katara.

"Remember when you told me it gets better?" she asks him. Zuko is drawing a map on her back, she thinks. He murmurs in assent. "I believe you," she says. "I believe you."

Falling. Pale arms curling around her hips to steady her landing, honey and sunlight and gold.

* * *

"She looks like you," Zuko says. He's crying freely now, a smile on his face so wide that it _has_ to hurt. "She looks like you, Katara." Uncle Iroh's hand is on his shoulder, and Katara smiles up at him.

"She has your eyes, Zuko," Katara tells him when he leans closer, pressing his cheek against his wife's. "Look."

The baby coos, reaching out and grabbing Zuko's finger when he extends it. "What do you want to name her?"

Katara gazes into her baby's eyes, her heart pounding, fast but steady. She looks and she sees the familiar dark skin, the small, sharp nose. "Kya," she tells him. "I want to name her Kya."

Zuko buries his face in Katara's hair. "That's perfect."

_Kya._

Katara closes her eyes, smiling slightly.

* * *

"Kya's _three,_ Zuko. The _dao_ is probably longer than her."

"Is not," he counters, blocking her attack. "She won't leave me alone, Katara, she wants the sword."

"So keep it out of her view!" Katara says indignantly. "You are _not_ teaching her to use the sword."

"Killjoy," Zuko mutters.

"Says you."

It happens all over again, the way it did all those years ago—face paling, body sinking to the ground.

Katara can't understand why it happens—he's been drinking water, he's been eating normally. So _why..."_

Slowly, she puts a hand above where his scar from the lightning is, causing him to groan loudly in pain. "Maybe—don't touch that."

"Zuko," Katara murmurs. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

He's unconscious before he can answer.

* * *

Her fingers are laced together so tightly that her fingers have turned white.

"It was always going to happen," Zuko tells her, his voice small from where he lies on the bed. "I got electrocuted in the heart."

"I couldn't heal you well enough," Katara breathes.

"No, no, don't say that," he pleads, sitting up slowly and putting his arms around her from behind. "Don't ever say that. You saved my life."

"For how long? I obviously didn't do enough!"

"I'm not dead," he says into her hair. He doesn't add _yet,_ but he doesn't need to. "And I won't die any time soon."

"You're not a healer, Zuko! you don't know that! And I—"

"—didn't fail," he finishes, pressing his lips to the place where her neck meets her shoulder. "You didn't fail me, Katara. You never did, ever. It's just an occasional side effect—"

"How long have you kept it hidden from me?" she asks him. "How long, Zuko?"

When he blinks, she feels his eyelashes brushing her skin. "I didn't want to worry you."

"Answer the question."

"Since the war."

Katara lifts her hands to press the palms into her eyes. "How couldn't I have seen it at all?"

"Please believe me when I say it wasn't common, Katara," he pleads. "It would get like this every once in a while, but I'd always get better."

"And what if it doesn't?" she chokes out. 

"It will, Katara," he promises. "It will. It always does, no matter what."

* * *

"Kya, honey, please stop Sona and Huan from killing each other," Katara sighs. "I think Sona's about to set him on fire."

"Sona's four," Kya mutters. "She doesn't have the strength to set him on f—"

Huan yells angrily in the distance, or as angrily a four-year-old can be. Without even looking in their direction, Kya sighs and bends a wave of water over to where the twins are about to fight to the death. Huan splutters, sending a wave of it back at Kya.

Katara crosses her arms. "I wasn't this violent at nine."

Kya grins as if that was a compliment. But her grin slides off of her face as she looks back up at her. "How's Dad?"

Katara's heart sinks. "He's okay, Kya."

Kya crosses her own arms. "You're lying, I think."

She bends down to kiss her daughter's forehead. "Watch the twins for me, okay?"

Kya nods, looking sullen. Sona toddles over, grabbing Kya's leg. "Up," she commands.

"You're too heavy!" Kya complains, taking Sona's outstretched hand and leading her away, their voices fading.

* * *

"What are you thinking about?" 

Zuko's chest is pressed to her back, and she tries to memorize the feeling of his steady, even breathing against her own body. "Nothing."

He's silent for some time. "You're thinking about me."

"I always am." She tilts her head down. "I wish there was something—anything that I could do. But I'm stuck here, and I have to watch you go through this."

"And it's the last time you'll ever see it, I think," he breathes. Katara can't bring herself to say no, it's not. 

"What if they become like me?" she asks softly. "What if they forget you, if they lose you so early?"

"You won't let them forget," Zuko tells her. "You'll tell them about me. You'll tell them about me so much that they'll whine and complain and ask you to shut up about their father, but they'll be happy. You'll keep me alive, Katara. In here," he murmurs, moving his hand to her chest. "In here."

She turns her body so that she faces him. Her strong, beautiful husband. "Kiss me," she says quietly.

He does.

* * *

Zuko does not die screaming and sobbing. He does not die fighting, not on the outside at least.

He tells Kya, Sona and Huan that he loves them before Katara sends them out of the room. And then he dies shortly after, after he tells Katara that she is beautiful and that he loves her, always.

"I'll be waiting to catch you when you fall," he says finally. He doesn't say anything else.

Katara thought watching someone struggle against the clutches of death was the worst thing she could have possibly witnessed, but she was wrong. She wants him to fight, she wants him to yell and tell her that he won't go, that he'll stay with her, that he won't leave her yet. 

_Fight,_ she thinks desperately. _Come on, fight, fight, Zuko, please. I know you don't want to leave me now, I know you don't want to leave me like this, but please, just fight, please._

Katara holds his hand even after he stops holding hers, and then she cries into his pillow.

* * *

Sona and Huan and Kya are sitting together in silence, Katara sees when she finally comes out of Zuko's room and into the courtyard. There are no petty arguments between them now—just small hands clasped together and thin shoulders pressed against each other. 

_They'll remember him,_ Katara thinks with conviction. _They won't ever forget him._

 _Because I'll keep you alive, in here._ Absentmindedly, she raises a hand to her heart.

Zuko is alive, she realizes. She realizes that when she sees Kya's honeyed eyes, Sona and Huan's pale skin.

Zuko is alive, in almost all the ways that matter.

* * *

Sometimes when they would lie in bed together, Zuko would draw nearly meaningless patterns onto her skin—all over her hip, her back, her arms. Maybe sometimes it was just shapes and spirals—sometimes, she thinks it might have been her name. It is a small, minute detail, one that should have been buried under thousands of memories. Katara should have forgotten it completely.

She is glad that she remembers.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are great!!


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